Green hydrogen: at Marghera the recovery plan pays for a 750-tonne-a-year plant. Customers buy 50

2 November 2026, 16:13

In July, at Porto Marghera, a company opened a green hydrogen plant: green hydrogen is obtained from water using renewable sources and, in industry, is meant to replace methane. It cost €20 million, 17 of them paid by the PNRR, Italy's national recovery plan, and it was finished in twelve months, as the plan's deadlines required. It can produce 750 tonnes a year; the contracts for 2026, with a few northern municipalities for their buses, are worth 50. The timetable has been met; the customers, not yet.

That case is not an isolated one. The Ministry of the Environment divided €450 million from the PNRR among the regions, and their calls for tenders financed fifty-one plants of the same kind. The one at Falconara Marittima, opened in September, has no industrial customers for now, according to the company that built it. According to the industry association, the product costs between six thousand and twelve thousand euros a tonne more than hydrogen made from methane: the factories that are supposed to buy it did their sums before the State did.

The customer, after all, is already written into law. A European directive, transposed by Italy in January 2026, requires that from 2030 at least forty-two per cent of the hydrogen used in industry be green. Those who do not buy it today because it is too expensive will have to buy it anyway in four years' time: demand will come not from convenience but from obligation, and in the meantime the plants wait with their machinery already paid for.

To cover the gap between the two prices, a ministerial decree of 5 June 2026 set up auctions run by the GSE, the state-owned company that manages incentives. Producers bid a discount and, every month for fifteen years, the State pays them the difference between the value set in the auction and the cost of the fuel that hydrogen replaces; the money comes back only if that cost rises above the auction value. The European Commission has authorised the aid up to €6 billion. First the State paid for the plants; now it is committing to pay part of the price of the hydrogen as well.

Nobody has done the sums on the Venetian plant. Divided by the 50 tonnes under contract for 2026, the public contribution comes to €340,000 for every tonne, while the price gap with hydrogen made from methane is at most twelve thousand.

The plan wanted the works finished by 2026; the directive gives customers until 2030.

This article was prompted by a news item published in Il Post on 2 November 2026.